Book Chatter

As much as I wanted to keep going with this one, I couldn’t force myself to finish it. It was long listed for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and it started off great and included everything that a girl could ask for in a book, but around page 100 it began to lose me, and by page 200, I fell out of love with it.

Reading it was like a great first date, with the second date being only ho-hum. I took a brief survey of readers on Facebook and then checked out Goodreads and the consensus was to put it aside. I may pick it up again if I hear one of you raving about it, but for now, it has been placed in DNF (did not finish) status.

My apologies to Hollinghurst. You had me at “Hello” but lost me when my fave character no longer appeared in flesh and blood.

So Cal has been dry for several weeks so when rain was predicted for this weekend, I planned my weekend around it. Comfort food, books, cozy jammies, etc. What we got though was a downpour at 6am on Saturday which lasted for 30 minutes. That’s it! Why was I up at 6am on a Saturday? The Boy had an early morning basketball game so unfortunately, I had the fun of dragging him out of bed.

Today, there is no rain in sight. That’s okay though, I still have a roast cooking away in the crock pot and I might throw a gluten-free lasagna together for later this week. I just love to cook on Sunday. I am still reading The Stranger’s Child. It’s slow going for me. It started off great but then took a very weird turn. I felt as if I missed a huge plot point so I reread several pages and I still don’t understand what is going on. I am about halfway through but it might be a DNF for me as I have a lot of other books to get to and this one is holding me back.

Remember my post about the new, snazzy rec center that they built at the university where I work? And how they wanted to charge staff a ridiculous amount of money ($163 per academic term)? Well, I went to the test run last Friday and because I was a grad and technically enrolled as a student, I got a discount of 60% off. Of course, I signed-up on the spot and then worked out for the first time in I don’t know how long. The foot injury which I never even mentioned here and all my auto-immune stuff kept me from working out, but now I am back. And sore. And limping around, but it feels good. My membership begins on Jan. 27th because that is when the Spring semester begins. Stay tuned for some humorous posts because I will be working out at 6am (before work) and I expect my body to rebel in a big way.

One more update regarding my book club. My suggestion of We Need to Talk about Kevin got shot down in a big way. I was sort of saddened by it, but not surprised. “Depressing” does not go over well with the group, but I felt it would be a really good discussion book. However, when someone else pitched my 2nd choice I threw in Norwegian Wood (which I really did not expect them to choose) and it ended up getting chosen. I will post the entire list here soon.

Right now, I am about to enjoy my second cup of coffee for the morning. Later, rehearsal for The Boy and then I must run out to buy more coffee because we are totally out. Happy Sunday to you!